Business-Scene hits the business scene

Just had an interesting two days soft-launching Business-Scene in Swansea/West Wales and Cardiff.

Business-Scene is a portal for business networks and business support organisations and a whole lot more for SME's. There are links on the right of my Blog front page if you want to take a look.

According to the DTI there are around 4m businesses in the UK. Around 175k of them in Wales. Of the 4m around 99.3% are SME's (employing under 250 people).

The other interesting fact is that 80% of a typical SME's customers are within 30 miles of the business. So why are all the on-line business-networks and membership organisations aiming to be global with no emphasis on local? I gues it's because most of these networks are knowledge-economy networks and knowledge workers tend to have a national or international focus with less work available locally.

So Business-Scene was invented (not by me) to address general SME's and facilitate local trading.

It's why I have embraced it. There's not much there yet - the official launches happen in September-November 2006. Those who early-adopt will have the best chance of building local profiles and perception of them as the expert.

Take a look - if you like it tell your friends.

Richard